This Week in the Twitterverse

A twitter troll finds out what happens when keepin' it real goes wrong, ESPN continues to be ESPN, Sparty continues to be Sparty, a junior hockey team scores at 4:20 , and... Jose Canseco.

Dad, We’re Well Out of Range

Boxers can’t get all the way over here…

If you’ve ever seen a kid at the zoo, you probably laughed a little inside when he was deathly frightened by the tiger behind the giant piece of tiger-proof Plexiglas. “After all,” you thought to yourself, “doesn’t he know that we’re safe here?” But when you think about it, the kid is probably right; the tiger PROBABLY won’t be able to get to us, but if he does… TIGER.

This brings us to the cautionary tale of “The Master,” (aka @jimmyob88) a troll who trolled the wrong dude. After professional boxer Curtis Woodhouse lost a fight, our internet tough guy started to taunt the ACTUAL tough guy, saying things like (edits mine):

@woodhousecurtis Haha u lost u silly mug fight a 10 year old next time if u want to actually win u waste of [reproductive fluids]

Random internet dude taunts athlete. Shocking news. But wait, who left the door to the tiger cage open?

Someone told Woodhouse who Jimmy was, and more importantly, where he lived. Now, to be clear, I am not advocating vigilante justice. I am not advocating vigilante justice. I am not… okay, screw it. Vigilante justice please. The best part was that Woodhouse live-tweeted his journey of impending doom:

HEY THERE, KITTY KITTY. It was at this point, when this dude saw a picture of his own street sign that our troll friend decided, “maybe I should apologize.”

@woodhousecurtis i am sorry its getting abit out of hand i am in the wrong i accept that

The lessons here are pretty clear. Sure, you probably shouldn’t troll athletes for all the usual reasons (it’s an immature thing to do, it reflects poorly on you and the things you support, it can come back to bite you professionally, it’s intrusive on people who are simply trying to do their jobs, blah blah blah), but also because they might show up at your door feelin’ all punchy.

Then again, if you have a raw steak you can throw at them, they might get distracted.

Embrace Counting

NFL free agency began this week, which is ESPN’s signal to remove Adam Schefter from his undersea lair and unleash him Kraken-like upon the sports world. Schefter does a great job, and has sources in every conceivable corner of professional football. ESPN, though, may have taken their Schefter love a bit too far:

That’s an hour-by-hour count of how many tweets Schefter sent on Tuesday. It’s not about WHAT he was tweeting, but was instead about how MUCH he was tweeting. Now, I didn’t see the segment, so I have no idea what point they were trying to make, but I have some guesses:

“As you can see, a bunch of interesting stuff happened in the NFL during the 3:00 hour.”

“Once Schefter stopped live-tweeting ‘Dr. Phil‘, he sent out a bunch of good NFL-related info.”

“NUMBERS DON’T LIE. HERE ARE SOME NUMBERS.”

“Is Schefter still elite? Or is he coasting based on his 3:00 success?”

“Look, we have 24 hours to fill on each of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNNEWS, ESPN Deportes, and ESPN Classic. YOU try to do that without resorting to crap like this.”

Speaking of the Worldwide Leader…

Last week there was a dumbass segment on ESPN First Take. They call the segment “ESPN First Take.” It was a ‘debate’ between Skip Bayless and Richard Sherman, and it was everything you have come to expect from that. I don’t want to poison your mind with the stupid, but if you really want to watch it, click here but do not click there. Bill Simmons, who is an ESPN employee, took to Twitter to declare his displeasure:

ESPN responded with their usual easy-going attitude about criticism, by which I mean that according to Deadspin they suspended Simmons from Twitter for a couple of days. This is apparently not the first time they’ve done this to Simmons.

So yeah, ESPN gave one of their biggest names a time-out for sassing. No word on whether Simmons was made to write statements on a blackboard or sit in a corner to think about what he’s done. They can’t confront Simmons about it because that would make it a bigger story, and because Simmons was right. They can’t AGREE with Simmons, because that would mean starting a conflict with Skip Bayless and OH MY GOD STOP GIVING SKIP BAYLESS THINGS TO TALK ABOUT THAT ARE ABOUT SKIP BAYLESS. I suppose their other option would be to just shrug and move on with life, but that was… unlikely. So they needed to do something, and they decided to go with a petty slap on the wrist.

But does it strike me as really petty and pointless to take away one communication medium from a guy who has as many platforms of communication as Simmons. It also seems really stupid to piss off Simmons, who is one of the less scoffed-at figures in the ESPN empire. They’re down to very few “personalities” who aren’t openly scorned by everyone not employed by ESPN. Take a look at this list of “commentators” and count the people aren’t absolutely terrible. Now tell me they can afford to lose Simmons.

Pot, Meet Kettle

Drake Harris shocked the college recruiting world recently when he announced that he was decommitting from Michigan State. As expected, a number of people took this news not so well. One in particular, though, caught my eye (since deleted):

If this Drake Harris kid decommits from MSU and goes to #scUM he better keep his ass out of East Lansing. #chump

Okay, dumbass 14-year-olds and random unbalanced folks I can understand. They don’t see these recruits as human beings, but rather as abstract star-ratings on a recruiting board. What I can’t understand is a former football player not “getting it.” He’s been through this process. He knows what it’s like to not be sure about your school choice. And do you know how I know that? BECAUSE BRIAN LINTHICUM TRANSFERED SCHOOLS AFTER HIS FRESHMAN YEAR. He started at Clemson, but then transferred to Michigan State. And now Drake Harris is a “chump” because he chose one school and then changed his mind?

Now, this is Junior A hockey. And it’s hockey. Of course the players are getting drunk and high. But could a team really get 7-38 high? How much weed do you have to smoke as a team to rack up a –571? There’s “hung over,” and then there’s “started 0-25 hung over.”

I don't get why anyone gives a rat's ass about following another person's typically inane observations about whatever. But, damn, that is the strangest compilation of stuff in a post I have read on here in the last four years. I'm beginning to think Jose Canseco deserves his own special weekly column.

I like this feature, but I believe it could use a little more "sizzle". I propose changing the name to "This Week Across the Twitterverse"; then simply use the concomitant acronym for your headline instead of all that annoying, laborious typing.

through the plexiglass at the Tallahassee Junior Museum (really a zoo) on Sunday! It was really playful, kept rolling out of its bath to come over and stick its muzzle against the plastic. We just put our faces right back up to it. It also pawed the plastic very playfully, which made it shake, and we noticed that it had huge paws that suggested it might still be growing and really nicely-groomed white nails that could really rip the sh*t out of us if it stopped feeling positively toward us.

What I find even funnier about the Linthicum/Harris thing is that the kid didn't even sign a LOI yet...he's just a high school junior picking schools. Its not like it was on the eve of NSD or anything. Sheesh. And this semi-professional is threatening him saying he better keep out of EL? Wow.

And the thing about it is, I've found myself starting and deleting several emails in the past half hour to my younger sister, an msu grad, and my step brother, another msu grad, to highlight this extreme douchebaggery to them because they are very quick to defend their teams. But as much as I love them, they're still sparties and they won't get it, or at least their first reaction will be to deflect attention away from this story and come up with some spin of some bad thing "they heard" Michigan did or got away with.

Step 2: Graduate in 5 years with one degree in communications, taking "Edge" multiple times (one of those Stanford athlete classes where you write a ten page paper on literally anything and get full credit after never going to class).

Step 3: Become a public figure and do well in the NFL for a season or two.

Step 4: Ridicule all of those plebeians with Vanderbilt degrees who are doing their jobs as sports analysts.

While we mostly criticize the pro athletes slinging coke, jerk offs like this guy coming and basically saying that he looks down on 99.99% of our resumes is just as big of a put off. My updated list of least favorite athletes: 1) William Gholston 2) Richard Sherman 3) Wisconsin's entire basketball team....especially the giant ginger.

So despite all warnings to the contrary (because of them?) I went and watched that ESPN clip. Know what? Bayless actually comes across, in the main, as someone trying to remain professional in the face of personal attacks. Clearly a sign of the End Times. Also clearly a sign that, as smart as Richard Sherman appears to think he is, he damn sure wasn't smart enough to recognize the TV Troll game that Bayless is paid to play.

I love how you attach the Canseco tweets from most recent to the first. Makes it an absolute joy to get to the beginning and everything comes together in one swoop. Also, this is not sarcasm; I really enjoy reading his tweets that way.

Brian Linthicum works with my friend. I met him when we were all out. My friend pointed out I'm a Michigan fan and he started giving me shit for it. Not jokingly giving me shit, but actually giving me shit. I laughed it off b/c, well, I'm 33 and not THAT big of an a-hole. Anyway, that's the mark of a man who takes himself too seriously.